feeling listless

Education It’s the first day of junior school and there is a massive introductory assembly where we would meet out new teachers for the first time. Presumably to put us all at ease, one of the teachers asked a series of questions. I can’t remember why now, but I remember the first clearly:
”Do any of you know the name of a famous local composer.”
I thought for a moment. I was the one to raise a solitary hand (something I’d get used to). Teacher pointed.
“Yes.”
“Tchaikovsy.” I said. It was the only name I could think of at seven.
The teacher grinned. My classmates looked at me, realizing they’d found the kid they were going to be bullying for the next four years.
The teacher grinned.
"No …. Anyone else?”
The answer was John Lennon I found out later. But by actually knowing the name of a …… composer my academic career was set. Knowing a lot about everything, but never anything useful or important. I put that down to watching Blue Peter. It was the ideal counterpoint to school. It offered me a strong lineup of interesting stories on a range of subjects, described in an interesting way. It’s a cliché, but it made me think about the world. Unlike the ponderousness of school where learning about a subject would frequently amount to reading from a book or copying, on Blue Peter a subject was given its ten minutes, about the concentration span of a child on anything and made it interesting. What it essentially did for me, at least, was to diversify my interests so that I would have a good knowledge of everything.